And of such an one we are told that it is a natural
and reasonable view to take, not merely that He claimed
a direct communication with God, which disordered
reason could alone excuse Him for claiming, but that
He based His whole mission on a pretension to such
supernatural powers as a man could not pretend to
without being conscious that they were delusions.
The conscience of that age as to veracity or imposture
was quite clear on such a point. Jew and Greek
and Roman would have condemned as a deceiver one who,
not having the power, took on him to say that by the
finger of God he could raise the dead. And yet
to a conscience immeasurably above his age, it seems,
according to M. Renan, that this might be done.
It is absurd to say that we must not judge such a
proceeding by the ideas of our more exact and truth-loving
age, when it would have been abundantly condemned
by the ideas recognised in the religion and civilisation
of the first century.

M. Renan repeatedly declares that his great aim is
to save religion by relieving it of the supernatural.
He does not argue; but instead of the old familiar
view of the Great History, he presents an opposite
theory of his own, framed to suit that combination
of the revolutionary and the sentimental which just
now happens to be in favour in the unbelieving schools.
And this is the result: a representation which
boldly invests its ideal with the highest perfections
of moral goodness, strength, and beauty, and yet does
not shrink from associating with it also—­and
that, too, as the necessary and inevitable condition
of success—­a deliberate and systematic
willingness to delude and insensibility to untruth.
This is the religion and this is the reason which appeals
to Christ in order to condemn Christianity.